I really enjoyed the heck out of my Vapor Bros vaporizer, but it’s been on the fritz war often than not lately. I know I use it on the regular but I really thought it would last longer than the few years I’ve had it.

Vaporizers For Smoking: Enter The Iolite

I’ve long been a proponent of using vaporizers for smoking instead of a traditional pipe or rolled cigarette. I heard a lot about portable vaporizes and decided to look into a little more closely. Long story short, I wound up buying an iolite portable vaporizer and I really like it.

You can take it outside with you, in the car, or wherever you happen to be. I walked into the bank the other day buffet where my highlight and some people looked at me as if to say what the world is this guy doing in others which is curious and had to come up and ask about it.

In short, I basically just told them it’s like those electronic cigarettes that you see on the Internet or on commercials later at night. Everyone wanted to know how I felt after using it and I explained to them that I’ve been using vaporizers for smoking for years and that it’s much easier on my lungs.

For those not keen on what a vaporizer actually does, in a nutshell it heats the plant material such as tobacco or whatever blend you enjoy while relaxing. But it doesn’t get so hot as to cause combustion.

This is critically important–the fact that these do not produce actual smoke, but you will see a light puff of vapor in the air which is not unlike a cloud. In general there is not much if any smell associated with using one of these vaporizers in place of actually lighting and burning something.

One of the byproducts of combustion is particular matter, or smoke, which can irritate your throat, lungs and anything it comes in contact with. Keeping a chamber heated to a preset temperature that will allow combustion extracts the moisture from your herbal blend and creates a smooth mellow vapor.

Okay, back to talking about the iolite. I was used to my Vapor Brothers tying me down to my desk at home where I had it. Now I could bring my herbal blend along with me if I went to the movies, which I’ve done several times. Because there’s no smell, and virtually no noise, it’s very inconspicuous and unless you make a spectacle of yourself it’s most likely that nobody will even notice, particularly in a dark movie theater.

Here’s how the iolite works: it uses a small burner with the thermostat that shuts down before combustion to allow for clean, smooth vapor. You fill it with butane, click the piezoelectric button a few times(this is similar to lighting a gas grill) and in a minute or so you’ve got vapor on the go. Holy crap, I’m a poet and I didn’t know it!

Vaporizers For Smoking: Iolite Wrapup

But I digress, so that’s really all there is to it. All you need besides your blend and the iolite, is butane. Because of the piezoelectric lighting system, there is no need for batteries as a few clicks starts the device to work. Overall, I’m very happy with this thing and I recommend it to people all the time.

If you do decide to get in iolite, there are a couple of things you want to make sure you get. 1st is the maximizer, which is essentially a set of spikes that distributes the heat more evenly from the main heating pin which helps make sure you get as much out of your blend as you can.

You also should get the optional extended set of mouthpieces because depending on your blend you may find that they become sticky rather quickly. This is mostly cleaned up pretty easily with a little bit of rubbing alcohol and some Dawn. Of course, it goes without saying, that you want to keep the alcohol and for that matter the lighter fluid away from the vaporizer when it’s warm.

So like I said I’m really happy with this thing I would recommend it to anybody who’s been thinking about using vaporizers for smoking and I really love when a product is close to as good as I’d like it to be

With that being said, my biggest gripe is that the rather small chamber is sometimes hard to clean and the screens take a little practice to change. I’m pleased that it really doesn’t use lighter fluid as quickly as my friend who is had one of these for years said I would. I use this thing all the time, but my experience is that I can use it several times before I need to put more butane in.

So, overall, the iolite portable has surpassed the Vapor Brothers vaporizers for smoking. I highly recommend it to all my fellow smokers in the name of your good health.

*Update*

There is a new, quieter version of the Iolite out now- a pal of mine just got his and it’s much quieter (not that mine makes much noise).  This might drive down the price of the model I got as people trade up and whatnot.